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Enterprise Tech


WHAT IS UNSTRUCTURED DATA AND WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO BUSINESSES? AN EASY
EXPLANATION FOR ANYONE

Bernard Marr
Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Enterprise Tech
Oct 16, 2019,12:33am EDT|


This article is more than 2 years old.
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The amount of data generated daily is just mind-boggling. And as much as 90
percent of that data is defined as unstructured data. But what does that mean
and what do you need to know about unstructured data? We delve into the details
below.



What Is Unstructured Data And Way Is It So Important To Businesses? An Easy
Explanation For Anyone

Adobe Stock


What is Unstructured Data?

Data that is defined as unstructured is growing at 55-65 percent each year.

Unstructured data can’t be easily stored in a traditional column-row database or
spreadsheet like a Microsoft Excel table. It’s therefore more difficult to
analyse and not easily searchable, which is why it wasn’t useful for
organizations until recent years. Today, however, we have unstructured data
analytics tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that were created
specifically to access the insights available from unstructured data.



Examples of Unstructured Data

Think about any kind of data that doesn’t have a recognizable structure and you
have identified an example of unstructured data. Here are some of the most
common examples of unstructured data:

·       Emails: Although emails include date, sender and recipient addresses and
subject information, the text in the body of the mail doesn’t follow a format.
Some refer to emails as semi-structured data.

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Importance of Unstructured Data

Since the bulk of data generated today is unstructured data, it’s important that
organizations find ways to manage and analyze it so that they can act on the
data and make important business decisions. This helps organizations prosper in
highly competitive environments. If this information is ignored, organizations
aren’t using everything that’s available to them to be successful.



Unstructured Data Analytics Tools

While organizations have relied on structured data insights for years, it wasn’t
until tools were developed to analyze structured data that the wealth of
information unstructured data contains became accessible and usable to
businesses in a meaningful way. Artificial intelligence algorithms now help
extract meaning automatically from the volumes of unstructured data that is
created daily. Businesses use big data tools and software such as Hadoop to
process, mine, integrate, store, track, index and report business insights from
raw unstructured data. Without these tools, it would be impossible for
organizations to efficiently manage unstructured data.

One use case for unstructured data is customer analytics. When companies are
able to integrate unstructured data from a variety of sources such as call
center transcripts, online reviews of products, chatbot conversations and social
media mentions, and use artificial intelligence to spot patterns in the
information from these sources, they have the intel available to make swift
decisions that can improve customer relationships.

Unstructured data can be a treasure trove of marketing intelligence. With the
ability to quickly scan huge datasets and find patterns in customer behavior,
decision-makers learn what products or services are most compelling for their
target market. This has important applications for product development as well
as figuring out what marketing initiatives are most worthwhile.

For organizations that are heavily regulated, compliance issues can be costly in
time, money and reputation. With the insight provided by unstructured data when
analyzing emails and chatbot conversations, for example, organizations could
uncover regulatory issues earlier and before there is a significant negative
business impact. This ability is made possible by natural language processing,
sentiment analysis, pattern recognition, speech-to-text conversions through
machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms.

To fully realize the potential of unstructured data, organizations need to knock
down data silos in favor of a scalable data hub. By having the systems to store,
analyze and report data from a variety of sources and share it with
decision-makers in a business, organizations can finally uncover the enormous
business value of unstructured data.


Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other
work here. 
Bernard Marr



Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker,
futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and
companies. He

... Read More



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